Year One Recap #1
Better getting started at this later rather than never.
EreBlog Year One Review #1 - Interesting Peoples (aka the “Personas Blog”)
(the order of these was determined by random, literally /random, deciding who went next. I found it fitting Wiseman ended up last.)
Kailani
Kailani belongs to that extremely small classification of players that is both humble and competent. Lani’s an exceptionally good player that I’ve seen perform perfectly time and time again, yet no matter how often I point this out she makes vague excuses or doubts. At this point I’m pretty sure it’s not just an elaborate act - poor Kai seems genuinely unaware of how much better of a player she is.
I met Kailani when I joined AXI, but my first coherent memory of doing things with her was helping her on the CoP mission 6-4 airship. I liked the members as players but it wasn’t that good of a group for that mission as far as jobs went. We wiped to Omega and then again to Ultima. After the Ultima wipe, nobody really had any idea how much time we had left. We’d failed the mission a few times before and it was clear we weren’t going to try again so this was our last chance. Acting pretty much entirely on instinct based on my internal clock and how much time I figured we might have left, I ordered the entire party to attack a 24% Ultima while weakened. All six of us, weakened. Paladin rushes up and uses Invincible, Kailani Benedictioned as soon as weakness wore, and all the DDs 2houred their respective damage 2hours. We did kill Ultima and with only about a minute and a half to spare. Had we waited for weakness to wear off, we would have timed out.
As of late, we’ve been running around helping her boyfriend Lycas get various stuff done like coffer keys and avatar fights and doing level synch parties. She’s leveling dancer and it’s sexy.
Lani claims she has a voice that sounds like a guy, which blows my mind. Whenever she talks on vent she has, by far and large, the most girly voice I’ve ever heard. She also says things like groovy and cool beans. And likes Saftey Dance.
Kisana
Kisa doesn’t screenshot well. I had to intentionally ask her to pose for these. Silly girl only has mage jobs levels. When I’m on the front lines I can’t see her, and when I’m on the back I’m usually too busy doing healing or something to take good screenshots. Plus she’s a taru. Small little things.
My first entry talks about how I beat Kisa for WHM pants, which implies I’ve known her for more than a year, but didn’t like her enough to give her the WHM pants. Come to think of it, I still wouldn’t. GTFO my pants. Not that you’d use them anyway (haha!) - read on!
Kisa’s essentially the only reliable mage I hang around with, and that includes myself most days. She’s a pretty straight shooter. Except when it comes to Nyzul start times; she inconveniently “forgets” like every other week. She’s usually the one that solves the problems and her solution usually deals with the fact that she has the largest group of random friends ever. She also has what can only be described as a spreadsheet fetish. I made my own (what I thought was) sophisticated Salvage tracker, but after seeing what Kisa did to the Nyzul tracker, it makes my effort look like the scribbling of a toddler on the bedroom walls with nontoxic crayons.
She’s also leveling dancer and it’s also sexy.
There is evidence to support the fact that Kisa never wears pants. Not just in game (though she’s not wearing pants in either screenshot here) but in real life too. When asked about this on vent, she quipped “well maybe I like it a little breezy.” NEVER MORE HAVE I WISHED I COULD SCREENSHOT VENTRILLO CONVERSATIONS.
Next best thing.
Shpendi
Shpendi is dangerous. That’s really the only way to describe him. Though, this is pretty much how he demands to be referred as, so you can take that however you will.
Shpendi’s a dangerous salvage leader. He leads our salvage group. Well, mostly. Sometimes. When Shpendi’s online he leads salvage. Okay no, that’s not quite right either. When Shpendi’s online and not afk he sometimes leads salvage. That’s pretty accurate. Things got a bit, mmm, inconsistent back there in the past year. I’ve been doing salvage for over a year now and only have three freaking pieces, which actually is more than most people have. Wow. When I think about it like that, fuck salvage! Bloody time sink! Though I guess I’m too close to being done with salvage to quit now. The fact that we’re selling Alexandrites to pay for half my Morrigan’s Robe materials cost is also a good reason not to quit. That’s right, they’re bribing me to stay in the group since I’m the only reliable mage they have left. Suckers!
… I think I got sidetracked somewhere in there.
Shpendi’s a dangerous monk. He and Brim parse pretty much dead, no matter what Wiseman says. Shpendi monk parties are essentially how I pay the outrageous merit point requirements for having as many endgame geared jobs as I do. Shpen’s the only person I’ve managed to sell on BRD DNC being as good, if not better, of a merit job than x2 BRD. Especially with the sexy sexy haste samba merits. Mmm, tasty.
Shpen’s coined a lot of random terms. A “Shpendi pull” is where you run into a room, intentionally get aggro, and run back out - a common salvage tactic. Not to be confused with this, “pulling a Shpendi” is becoming when you tell everyone that we’re doing a certain event, such as salvage, at a certain time that very night but do not yourself log on for the very event you scheduled. Not that we’re bitter or anything. I think Shpendi also coined the term “being on the Jevan bandwagon” for anyone that subs /THF on a job under the rational because the spike damage is so leetzor, a term named after a player that is the major offender. Get off the wagon, Brim, get off it.
YO SHPEN-DI!
Cibele
I spent ridiculous amounts of time running around with Cib about when ToAU came out. Like, 3 months or something. It’s not documented very well in Ereblog, but that’s probably because I was spending more time running around with Cib than writing Ereblogs. We did a hell of a lot of campaigning and various endgame stuffage during that time when I was in SX.
Cib’s a bit of a shutterbug (though she’s too lazy these days to take any new pictures) and the type of running around doing random crap activities we did on the game were indicative for taking screenshots. So I have, like, folders of Cibele/Ere screenshots. I don’t know what to do with them all.
Even though it didn’t last quite as long as it could have, the x2 DNC static with Cib was one of my absolute best memories in the game. Partially because DNC is just a fun job to level, partially because Cib was fun to be around, and partially because of us working together in odd ways. When I do the "fun events" entry I'll elborate on that a lot deeper.
Cib’s got a lot of these little unique mannerisms. I always got the impression that some English teacher in middle school imposed upon her the value of an expansive and descriptive vocabulary. Nearly everything she says has a few extra adjectives stuck in there for good measure. I know I’m not exactly short-winded on the words here, but she does this in normal day to day speech. It’s quite distressing.
I can't even remember how many nights we left our characters sitting at the pole in Whitegate. Dozens.
Children of Men sucks. Though Stardust was pretty good.
Wiseman
Last and definitely least is Wiseman. I swear, this guy. Yeah, he’s usually bored enough to come help on whatever weird thing I’m doing at the time. But at what cost?! This guy is half a force of nature and half intentional MPK. Figuring out which half is which is often something I ponder over in the chat log while dead from the latest disaster.
Never campaign with Wiseman. Unless you’re more interested in an amusing death than actual exp. You have been warned. Although, though he is the self-proclaimed MPK master, I’ve never seen him MPK a linkshell at Tiamat or JoL or something. Rumor has it he used to do this a lot in the good old days when men were real men and women were probably men playing as women, but I think it’s just a rumor.
I may eventually start a webcomic about Wiseman and myself, with Wise being the one that gets us into the stupid situations and me being the one that gets us out. Oh, and the campaign freelance Aurehat, because she turns into a freaking wyrm. If I could actually draw, this wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But the scripts just write themselves while we’re wandering around trying to get stuff done. I mean, look at this. Can you imagine the possibilities? And before you get on my case about being racist, this guy was just totally a lost cause. He signed up for the wrong assault despite us using autotranslate to explain everything. The only time we've ever disbanded a party outright in disgust.
Wiseman leveled SCH. And is leveling PUP. And leveled SMN a while ago. Thank God he has a RDM or we’d never let him within 10 feet of our adventures!
Wiseman is the reason small children are afraid to go outside at night. I'm not calling him a pedophile per se, but if I were a pre-teen, I'd feel pretty uncomfortable around him. On a similar and equally disturbing one, Wiseman wishes he had a sister. Make of that what you will.
SSEEEEEEERRRRRRRRKKKKEEEETTTTT!!!!
So that’s the list. If I didn’t put you on here, either 1) I didn’t do enough cool stuff with you 2) I secretly hate you, 3) you got me killed at that {murmurmur} event, or 4) you’re not a girl. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. Better luck next year. Except you can’t run next year, because it’s only people I’ve meet in the last year, so you’re pretty much SOL in the end.
Yeah. When I make a blog entry, I don't do it half way. Honestly half the reason I'm writing this thing is just to finally have a good excuse to use all these screenshots that never made it into the blog on the first go around. I have plenty more and plenty of stories so maybe I'll do another one of these year's end EreBlogs in a couple days.
Also, I intentionally structed the wording of this article to avoid saying anything good about Brimah. Because I am SICK OF THAT GUY getting in my blog! I dance upon your face!